It was midnight in the chapel of the convent.
The moonlight shone with exceeding lustre through the tall casements,
and lit into a ghastly semblance of life the marble images of saint
and martyr, that threw their long shadows over the consecrated floor.
Nothing could well be conceived more dreary, solemn, and sepulchral than
that holy place: its distained and time-hallowed walls; the impenetrable
mass of darkness that gathered into those recesses which the moonlight
failed to reach; its antique and massive tombs, above which reclined
the sculptured effigies of some departed patroness or abbess, who had
exchanged a living grave for the Mansions of the Blest. But there--oh,
wonderful human heart!--even there, in that spot, the very homily and
warning against earthly affections and mortal hopes--even there, couldst
thou beat with as wild, as bright, and as pure a passion as ever heaved
the breast and shone in the eyes of Beauty, in the free air that ripples
the Guadiana, or amidst the twilight dance of Castilian maids.
A tall figure, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak, passed slowly up
the aisle. But light and cautious though the footstep, it woke a low,
hollow, ominous echo, that seemed more than the step itself to disturb
the sanctity of the place. It paused opposite to a confessional, which
was but dimly visible through the shadows around it. And then there
emerged timidly a female form; and a soft voice whispered “It is thou,
Fonseca!”
“Hist!” was the answer; “he waits without. Be quick; speak not--come.”
Beatriz recoiled in surprise and alarm at the voice of a stranger; but
the man, seizing her by the hand, drew her hastily from the chapel, and
hurried her across the garden, through a small postern door, which stood
ajar, into an obscure street bordering the convent wall. Here stood the
expectant porter, with a bundle in his hand, which he opened, and took
thence a long cloak, such as the women of middling rank in Madrid wore
in the winter season, with the customary mantilla or veil. With these,
still without speaking, the stranger hastily shrouded the form of the
novice, and once more hurried her on till about a hundred yards from
the garden gate he came to a carriage, into which he lifted Beatriz,
whispered a few words to the porter, seated himself by the side of the
novice, and the vehicle drove rapidly away.
It was some moments before Beatriz could sufficiently recover from her
first agitation and terror, to feel alive to all the strangeness of her
situation. She was alone with a stranger; where was Fonseca? She turned
towards her companion.
“Who art thou?” she said, “whither art thou leading me-and why--”
“Why is not Don Martin by thy side? Pardon me, senora: I have a billet
for thee from Fonseca; in a few minutes thou wilt know all.”
At this time the vehicle came suddenly in the midst of a train of
footmen and equipages that choked up the way. There was a brilliant
entertainment at the French embassy; and thither flocked, all the
rank and chivalry of Madrid. Calderon drew down the blind and hastily
enjoined silence on Beatriz. It was some minutes before the driver
extricated himself from the throng; and then, as if to make amends for
the delay, he put his horses to their full speed, and carefully selected
the most obscure and solitary thoroughfares. At length, the carriage
entered the range of suburbs which still at this day the traveller
passes on his road from Madrid to France. The horses stopped before a
lonely house that stood a little apart from the road, and which from
the fashion of its architecture appeared of considerable antiquity. The
stranger descended and knocked twice at the door: it was opened by
an old man, whose exaggerated features, bended frame, and long beard,
proclaimed him of the race of Israel. After a short and whispered
parley, the stranger returned to Beatriz, gravely assisted her from the
carriage, and, leading her across the threshold, and up a flight of rude
stairs, dimly lighted, entered a chamber richly furnished. The walls
were hung with stuffs of gorgeous colouring and elaborate design.
Pedestals of the whitest marble placed at each corner of the room
supported candelabra of silver. The sofas and couches were of the heavy
but sumptuous fashion which then prevailed in the palaces of France and
Spain; and of which Venice (the true model of the barbaric decorations
with which Louis the Fourteenth corrupted the taste of Paris) was
probably the original inventor. In an alcove, beneath a silken canopy,
was prepared a table, laden with wines, fruits, and viands; and
altogether the elegance and luxury that characterised the apartment
were in strong and strange contrast with the half-ruined exterior of
the abode, the gloomy and rude approach to the chamber, and the mean and
servile aspect of the Jew, who stood, or rather cowered by the door,
as if waiting for further orders. With a wave of the hand the stranger
dismissed the Israelite; and then, approaching Beatriz, presented to her
Fonseca’s letter.
As with an enchanting mixture of modesty and eagerness Beatriz, half
averting her face, bent over the well-known characters, Calderon gazed
upon her with a scrutinising and curious eye.
The courtier was not, in this instance, altogether the villain that from
outward appearances the reader may have deemed him. His plan was this:
he had resolved on compliance with the wishes of the prince--his safety
rested on that compliance. But Fonseca was not to be sacrificed without
reserve. Profoundly despising womankind, and firmly persuaded of their
constitutional treachery and deceit, Calderon could not believe the
actress that angel of light and purity which she seemed to the enamoured
Fonseca. He had resolved to subject her to the ordeal of the prince’s
addresses. If she fell, should he not save his friend from being the
dupe of an artful _intriguante_?--should he not deserve the thanks
of Don Martin for the very temptation to which Beatriz was now to be
submitted? If he could convince Fonseca of her falsehood, he should
stand acquitted to his friend, while he should have secured his interest
with the prince. But if, on the other hand, Beatriz came spotless
through the trial; if the prince, stung by her obstinate virtue, should
menace to sink courtship into violence, Calderon knew that it would not
be in the first or second interview that the novice would have any real
danger to apprehend; and he should have leisure to concert her escape
by such means as would completely conceal from the prince his own
connivance at her flight. Such was the compromise that Calderon had
effected between his conscience and his ambition. But while he gazed
upon the novice, though her features were turned from him, and half
veiled by the headdress she had assumed, strange feelings, ominous and
startling, like those remembrances of the Past which sometimes come in
the guise of prophecies of the Future, thronged, indistinct and dim,
upon his breast. The unconscious and exquisite grace of her form, its
touching youth, an air of innocence diffused around it, a something
helpless, and pleading to man’s protection, in the very slightness
of her beautiful but fairy-like proportions, seemed to reproach his
treachery, and to awaken whatever of pity or human softness remained in
his heart.
The novice had read the letter; and turning, in the impulse of surprise
and alarm, to Calderon for explanation, for the first time she remarked
his features and his aspect; for he had then laid aside his cloak, and
the broad Spanish hat with its heavy plume. It was thus that their eyes
met, and, as they did so, Beatriz, starting from her seat, uttered a
wild cry--
“And thy name is Calderon--Don Roderigo Calderon?--is it possible?
Hadst thou never another name?” she exclaimed; and, as she spoke, she
approached him slowly and fearfully.
“Lady, Calderon is my name,” replied the marquis: but his voice
faltered. “But thine--thine--is it, in truth, Beatriz Coello?”
Beatriz made no reply, but continued to advance, till her very breath
came upon his cheek; she then laid her hand upon his arm, and looked
up into his face with a gaze so earnest, so intent, so prolonged, that
Calderon, but for a strange and terrible thought--half of wonder, half
of suspicion, which had gradually crept into his soul, and now usurped
it--might have doubted whether the reason of the poor novice was not
unsettled.
Slowly Beatriz withdrew her eyes, and they fell upon a large mirror
opposite, which reflected in full light the features of Calderon and
herself. It was then--her natural bloom having faded into a paleness
scarcely less statue-like than that which characterised the cheek of
Calderon himself, and all the sweet play and mobility of feature that
belong to first youth being replaced by a rigid and marble stillness of
expression--it was then that a remarkable resemblance between these two
persons became visible and startling. That resemblance struck alike, and
in the same instant, both Beatriz and Calderon; and both, gazing on the
mirror, uttered an involuntary and simultaneous exclamation.
With a trembling and hasty hand the novice searched amidst the folds of
her robe, and drew forth a small leathern case, closed with clasps of
silver. She touched the spring, and took out a miniature, upon which she
cast a rapid and wild glance; then, lifting her eyes to Calderon, she
cried, “It must be so--it is, it is my father!” and fell motionless at
his feet.
Calderon did not for some moments heed the condition of the novice: that
chamber, the meditated victim, the present time, the coming evil--all
were swept away from his soul; he was transported back into the past,
with the two dread Spirits, Memory and Conscience! His knees knocked
together, his aspect was livid, the cold drops stood upon his brow; he
muttered incoherently and then bent down, and took up the picture. It
was the face of a man in the plain garb of a Salamanca student, and in
the first flush of youth; the noble brow, serene and calm, and stamped
alike with candour and courage; the smooth cheek, rich with the hues
of health; the lips, parting in a happy smile, and eloquent of joy and
hope; it was the face of that wily, grasping, ambitious, unscrupulous
man, when life had yet brought no sin; it was, as if the ghost of youth
were come back to accuse the crimes of manhood! The miniature fell from
his hand--he groaned aloud. Then gazing on the prostrate form of the
novice, he said--“Poor wretch! can I believe that thou art indeed of
mine own race and blood; or rather, does not nature, that stamped these
lineaments on thy countenance, deceive and mock me? If she, thy mother,
lied, why not nature herself?”
He raised the novice in his arms, and gazed long and wistfully upon her
lifeless, but almost lovely features. She moved not--she scarcely seemed
to breathe; yet he fancied he felt her embrace tightening round him--he
fancied he heard again the voice that had hailed him “FATHER!” His heart
beat aloud, the divine instinct overpowered all things, he pressed a
passionate kiss upon her forehead, and his tears fell fast and warm upon
her cheek. But again the dark remembrance crossed him, and he shuddered,
placed the novice hastily on one of the couches, and shouted aloud.
The Jew appeared and was ordered to summon Jacinta. A young woman of the
same persuasion, and of harsh and forbidding exterior, entered, and to
her care Calderon briefly consigned the yet insensible Beatriz.
While Jacinta unlaced the dress, and chafed the temples, of the novice,
Calderon seemed buried in gloomy thought. At last he strode slowly away,
as if to quit the chamber, when his foot struck against the case of the
picture, and his eye rested upon a paper which lay therein, folded and
embedded. He took it up, and, lifting aside the hangings, hurried into a
small cabinet lighted by a single lamp. Here, alone and unseen, Calderon
read the following letter:
“TO RODERIGO NUNEZ.
“Will this letter ever meet thine eyes? I know not; but it is comfort to
write to thee on the bed of death; and were it not for that horrible and
haunting thought that thou believest me--me whose very life was in thy
love--faithless and dishonoured, even death itself would be the sweeter
because it comes from the loss of thee. Yes, something tells me that
these lines will not be written in vain; that thou wilt read them yet,
when this hand is still and this brain at rest, and that then thou
wilt feel that I could not have dared to write to thee if I were not
innocent; that in every word thou wilt recognise the evidence that is
strong as the voice of thousands,--the simple but solemn evidence
of faith and truth. What! when for thee I deserted all--home, and a
father’s love, wealth, and the name I had inherited from Moors who had
been monarchs in their day--couldst thou think that I had not made the
love of thee the core, and life, and principle of my very being! And one
short year, could that suffice to shake my faith?--one year of marriage,
but two months of absence? You left me, left that dear home, by the
silver Xenil. For love did not suffice to you; ambition began to stir
within you, and you called it ‘love.’ You said, ‘It grieved you that I
was poor; that you could not restore to me the luxury and wealth I had
lost.’ (Alas! why did you turn so incredulously from my assurance, that
in you, and you alone, were centred my ambition and pride?) You declared
that the vain readers of the stars had foretold at your cradle that
you were predestined to lofty honours and dazzling power, and that
the prophecy would work out its own fulfilment. You left me to seek in
Madrid your relation who had risen into the favour of a minister, and
from whose love you expected to gain an opening to your career. Do
you remember how we parted? how you kissed away my tears, and how they
gushed forth again? how again and again you said, ‘Farewell!’ and again
and again returned as if we could never part? And I took my babe, but
a few weeks born, from her cradle, and placed her in thy arms, and bade
thee see that she had already learned thy smile; and were these the
signs of falsehood? Oh, how I pined for the sound of thy footstep when
thou wert gone! how all the summer had vanished from the landscape; and
how, turning to thy child, I fancied I again beheld thee! The day after
thou hadst left me there was a knock at the cottage; the nurse opened
it, and there entered your former rival, whom my father had sought
to force upon me, the richest of the descendants of the Moor, Arraez
Ferrares. Why linger on this hateful subject? He had tracked us to our
home, he had learned thy absence, he came to insult me with his vows. By
the Blessed Mother, whom thou hast taught me to adore, by the terror
and pang of death, by my hopes of Heaven, I am innocent, Roderigo, I am
innocent! Oh, how couldst thou be so deceived? He quitted the cottage,
discomfited and enraged; again he sought me, and again and again;
and when the door was closed upon him, he waylaid my steps. Lone and
defenceless as we were, thy wife and child, with but one attendant I
feared him not; but I trembled at thy return, for I knew that thou went
a Spaniard, a Castilian, and that beneath thy calm and gentle seeming
lurked pride, and jealousy, and revenge. Thy letter came, the only
letter since thy absence, the last letter from thee I may ever weep
over, and lay upon my heart. Thy relation was dead, and his wealth
enriched a nearer heir. Thou wert to return. The day in which I might
expect thee approached--it arrived. During the last week I had seen and
heard no more of Ferrares. I trusted that he had at length discovered
the vanity of his pursuit. I walked into the valley, thy child in my
arms, to meet thee; but thou didst not come. The sun set, and the light
of thine eyes replaced not the declining day. I returned home, and
watched for thee all night, but in vain. The next morning again I went
forth into the valley, and again, with a sick heart, returned to my
desolate home. It was then noon. As I approached the door I perceived
Ferrares. He forced his entrance. I told him of thy expected return, and
threatened him with thy resentment. He left me; and, terrified with a
thousand vague forebodings, I sat down to weep. The nurse, Leonarda, was
watching by the cradle of our child in the inner room.
“I was alone. Suddenly the door opened. I heard thy step; I knew it; I
knew its music. I started up. Saints of Heaven! what a meeting--what a
return! Pale, haggard, thine hands and garments dripping blood, thine
eyes blazing with insane fire, a terrible smile of mockery on thy lip,
thou stoodst before me. I would have thrown myself on thy breast; thou
didst cast me from thee; I fell on my knees, and thy blade was pointed
at my heart--the heart so full of thee! ‘He is dead,’ didst thou say, in
a hollow voice; ‘he is dead--thy paramour--take thy bed beside him!’ I
know not what I said, but it seemed to move thee; thy hand trembled, and
the point of thy weapon dropped. It was then that, hearing thy voice,
Leonarda hastened into the room, and bore in her arms thy child.
‘See,’ I exclaimed, ‘see thy daughter; see, she stretches her hands to
thee--she pleads for her mother!’ At that sight thy brow became dark,
the demon seized upon thee again. ‘Mine!’ were thy cruel words--they
ring in my ear still--‘no! she was born before the time--ha! ha!--thou
didst betray me from the first!’ With that thou didst raise thy sword;
but, even then (ah, blessed thought! even then) remorse and love palsied
thy hand, and averted thy gaze: the blow was not that of death. I fell
senseless to the ground, and when I recovered thou wert gone. Delirium
succeeded; and when once more my senses and reason returned to me, I
found by my side a holy priest, and from him, gradually, I learned
all that till then was dare. Ferrares had been found in the valley,
weltering in his blood. Borne to a neighbouring monastery, he lingered
a few days, to confess the treachery he had practised on thee; to adopt,
in his last hours, the Christian faith; and to attest his crime with
his own signature. He enjoined the monk, who had converted and confessed
him, to place this proof of my innocence in my hands. Behold it enclosed
within. If this letter ever reach thee, thou wilt learn how thy wife
was true to thee in life, and has therefore the right to bless thee in
death.”
At this passage, Calderon dropped the letter, and was seized with a
kind of paralysis, which for some moments seemed to deprive him of life
itself. When he recovered he eagerly grasped a scroll that was enclosed
in the letter, but which, hitherto, he had disregarded. Even then, so
strong were his emotions, that sight itself was obscured and dimmed,
and it was long before he could read the characters, which were already
discoloured by time.
“TO INEZ.
“I have but a few hours to live,--let me spend them in atonement and in
prayer, less for myself than thee. Thou knowest not how madly I adored
thee; and how thy hatred or indifference stung every passion into
torture. Let this pass. When I saw thee again--the forsaker of thy
faith--poor, obscure, and doomed to a peasant’s lot--daring hopes shaped
themselves into fierce resolves. Finding that thou wert inexorable, I
turned my arts upon thy husband. I knew his poverty and his ambition: we
Moors have had ample knowledge of the avarice of the Christians’. I
bade one whom I could trust to seek him out at Madrid. Wealth--lavish
wealth--wealth that could open to a Spaniard all the gates of power was
offered to him if he would renounce thee forever. Nay, in order to crush
out all love from his breast, it was told him that mine was the prior
right--that thou hadst yielded to my suit ere thou didst fly with
him--that thou didst use his love as an escape from thine own
dishonour--that thy very child owned another father. I had learned, and
I availed myself of the knowledge, that it was born before its time.
We had miscalculated the effect of this representation, backed and
supported by forged letters: instead of abandoning thee, he thought only
of revenge for his shame. As I left thy house, the last time I gazed
upon thine indignant eyes, I found the avenger, on my path! He had seen
me quit thy roof--he needed no other confirmation of the tale. I fell
into the pit which I had digged for thee. Conscience unnerved my hand
and blunted my sword: our blades scarcely crossed before his weapon
stretched me on the ground. They tell me he has fled from the anger of
the law; let him return without a fear Solemnly, and from the bed of
death, and in the sight of the last tribunal, I proclaim to justice and
the world that we fought fairly, and I perish justly. I have adopted thy
faith, though I cannot comprehend its mysteries. It is enough that it
holds out to me the only hope that we shall meet again. I direct these
lines to be transmitted to thee--an eternal proof of thy innocence and
my guilt. Ah, canst thou forgive me? I knew no sin till I knew thee.
“ARRAEZ FERRARES.”
Calderon paused ere he turned to the concluding lines of his wife’s
letter; and, though he remained motionless and speechless, never were
agony and despair stamped more terribly on the face of man.
CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER OF INEZ.
“And what avails to me this testimony of my faith? thou art fled; they
cannot track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am
dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought
darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is
sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy
love! Can the shadow live without the sun? And wilt thou never place thy
hands on my daughter’s head, and bless her for her mother’s sake? Ah,
yes--yes! The saints that watch over our human destinies will one day
cast her in thy way: and the same hour that gives thee a daughter shall
redeem and hallow the memory of a wife.... Leonarda has vowed to be
a mother to our child; to tend her, work for her, rear her, though in
poverty, to virtue. I consign these letters to Leonarda’s charge, with
thy picture--never to be removed from my breast till the heart within
has ceased to beat. Not till Beatriz (I have so baptised her--it was thy
mother’s name!) has attained to the age when reason can wrestle with the
knowledge of sorrow, shall her years be shadowed with the knowledge of
our fate. Leonarda has persuaded me that Beatriz shall not take thy name
of Nunez. Our tale has excited horror--for it is not understood--and
thou art called the murderer of thy wife; and the story of our
misfortunes would cling to our daughter’s life, and reach her ears, and
perhaps mar her fate. But I know that thou wilt discover her not the
less, for Nature has a Providence of its own. When at last you meet her,
protect, guard, love her--sacred to you as she is, and shall be--the
pure but mournful legacy of love and death. I have done: I die blessing
thee!” “INEZ.”
Scarce had he finished those last words, ere the clock struck: it
was the hour in which the prince was to arrive. The thought restored
Calderon to the sense of the present time--the approaching peril. All
the cold calculations he had formed for the stranger-novice vanished
now. He kissed the letter passionately, placed it in his breast, and
hurried into the chamber where he had left his child. Our tale returns
to Fonseca.